1. Hardware Retailing | March 201640
Simplifying Social Media for the Busy Retailer
W
hile more retailers are engaging in
social media, a large percentage of
home improvement retailers are
less than pleased with their efforts.
In fact, according to a recent
survey conducted by the North American Retail
Hardware Association (NRHA) only 2 percent of
respondents identified their social media efforts as
“excellent,” while 46 percent classified their efforts as
“fair” or “poor.”
So, while more retailers are engaging in Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, most seem to feel
they have a long way to go.
To determine what takes a store’s social media
presence from fair to excellent, Hardware Retailing
spoke with retailers who have high-performing social
media accounts. These retailers are using strong,
effective content and utilizing social media as an
advertising tool to connect with customers.
In the following pages, we will help you evaluate
your social media presence and encourage you to
think about the following questions:
• Is your current process effective?
• Are you posting strong content?
• Are you actively growing your following?
• Are your efforts working?
By providing some insight into these topics and sharing
firsthand examples from retailers, we aim to offer you tools
and inspiration to amp up your social media engagement.
At the end of the story, Crystal Vilkaitis, retail social
media expert and owner of Crystal Media, will provide
her professional suggestions on best practices for
growing a social media following and how to track and
analyze social media results. You can read a full Q&A
with Vilkaitis online at TheRedT.com/SMExpert.
Before we explore the previous questions, you may
be asking, “Is social media worth it?” You probably run
circulars, have a website and occasionally advertise through
TV or radio, so does your business need social media, too?
Data from a recent NRHA consumer poll, which
surveyed 1,000 consumers, shows that more than
30 percent of respondents follow businesses on social
media, for reasons such as finding new products and
learning about deals.
Using social media for your business provides you
the opportunity to have a personal touchpoint with
your customers.
“Connecting with the customer is key for us,” says
Glenda Lehman Ervin, VP of marketing for Lehman’s in
Dalton, Ohio, “and social media is a great way to find out
what they are interested in. It is truly worth the time and
effort we put in to it.”
March 2016 | Hardware Retailing 41
By Hilary Welter, hwelter@nrha.org,
Sara Logel, slogel@nrha.org
How Do You Rate Your Business’s
Social Media Presence?
Asked By 264 Votes • 800 Followers
Ask Friends Follow
2 Days Ago • Share • Report • Unvote
North American Retail Hardware Association
2%
19%
16%
30%
34%
X Room for
ImprovementExcellent
Very Good
Poor
Good
Fair
Source: 2016 Social Media Study, North American Retail Hardware Association

2. Hardware Retailing | March 201642 March 2016 | Hardware Retailing 43
Is Your Current Process Effective?
W
ith the everyday hustle and bustle in
an independent home improvement
store, social media might be the last
thing you have time to think about. But you can
make the process easier by identifying two key
factors: your target demographic and a plan for
managing your accounts.
Knowing Your Customer Demographic
With countless social media platforms available,
determining where your customers are spending
their time is crucial.
“You have to look for what’s popular in your
area and across your customer demographic,” says
James Cabirac, owner of Kief Hardware in Cut Off,
Louisiana. “And beyond that, think about the age
of the customer you’re trying to reach.”
For example, Facebook is a popular platform
among Kief Hardware’s older customers, but
Instagram elicits attention from a younger crowd.
Equally important to understanding the different
social media platforms is your location and the
type of customer you’re trying to reach.
“If you’re in a large metro area and your
business is mostly B2B, you might want to be
really involved on Twitter and LinkedIn to find
professionals and communicate with them,” says
Jared Sawyer, owner of Sawyer’s True Value &
Just Ask Rental in The Dalles, Oregon. “If you’re
in a college town, you will want to be on younger
demographic platforms and talk to them in a way
that’s meaningful to them.”
For Sawyer, a lot of his customers are older
and less than 5 percent are millennials, so
Facebook is his main focus. However, to get the
younger generation more engaged, Sawyer and his
team created a Snapchat account that provides
the younger demographic with laid-back and
entertaining content, such as pets customers bring
into the store or sales associate playing pranks on
one another.
There is no right or wrong answer when
choosing a social media platform, or platforms,
for your business. To evaluate your current
accounts, or to get started, do your research.
Ask yourself, who is my target audience, and
what social media platforms are they on? And,
if you’re not sure, create an online or in-store
survey for customers or pull data from your
store’s loyalty program.
Account Management
Once you have committed to using social
media for your business, the next step is to
identify who is responsible for creating content
and overseeing the process.
Sawyer has help from his staff to post
content to the store’s different social media
platforms. However, he monitors all of the
accounts to ensure all posts are aligned with the
store’s brand.
Ervin has a team of staff members who use
scheduling tools to regularly post to the store’s
accounts. There are many scheduling tools
available for free online, such as Hootsuite
and TweetDeck, that make it easy to schedule
posts days, weeks or even months in advance.
Facebook also has a built-in scheduling feature.
While scheduling can be helpful, it is important
to check posts to ensure all content is still
relevant. For example, if you schedule a post
about an event, but decide to cancel it, you’ll
want to make sure to delete the post before
it deploys.
Cabirac is responsible for posting all content
to his store’s Facebook and Instagram accounts,
but he often involves his staff in content
creation. He believes that regardless of who is
posting to the store’s accounts, posts should
be coming from the voice of the store, not an
individual person.
“When it comes to Instagram and Facebook,
it’s Kief Hardware,” Cabirac says. “It’s not
me. I would answer something differently on
Facebook as Kief Hardware than I would as
James Cabirac. I want Kief Hardware to have its
own personality.”
And the best way to develop a personality for
your company on social media is to share strong
content that is relevant to your followers.
• Evaluate your store’s customer
demographic(s) and decide who you’re
going to target on social media.
• Determine where your target
demographic is spending time on
social media.
• Appoint a staff member or team to be
responsible for creating content and
overseeing the process.
Next Steps
Facebook
86%
50%
$ $$
Retailers say the
most beneficial
social media tool
for them is
42% of businesses
use paid advertising
on social media.
of retailers currently
use social media for
business.
of businesses
track their social
media analytics.
What social media
platforms do you
use for business
purposes? Please
select all that apply.
13.6%
Instagram
23.8%
Pinterest
99.5%
Facebook
32.2%
Twitter
7.0%
Other
19.2%
LinkedIn
27.1%
Yelp
Who maintains your social media accounts?
42.1%
21.5%
12.1%
10.3%
9.8%
2.8%
1.4%
A full-time staff member (one of his/her many responsibilities)
The owner
A part-time staff member (one of his/her many responsibilities)
Multiple employees
An outside agency/freelance/consultant
A full-time staff member (his/her primary job)
A part-time staff member (his/her primary job)
?
Source: 2016 Social Media Study, North American Retail Hardware Association

3. Hardware Retailing | March 201644
Y
ou may be using social media platforms
where your store’s target audience is
active, but if your posts lack substance,
you will not be able to break through the clutter
to reach your customers. How do you distinguish
your store from the rest?
Variety
When posting, it is important to consider several
topics. For example, Ervin and her team share photos
of products, events and people inside the store on
Lehman’s Instagram page. They also use Pinterest
to share DIY projects, gift ideas and advice, such as
winter skin care tips or ways to use Mason jars.
Cabirac explains it is important to take a subtle
approach when promoting his business.
“I’m really more interested in making our posts
entertaining than making a hard sell,” Cabirac says.
“I’m more about product placement than saying
‘here is this item.’”
For example, Cabirac and his staff produced
a video that featured a person cutting into a
watermelon in the store. Neither the post nor
video came out and said, “We sell watermelon,”
but the video implied it. The next day, the store
sold out of watermelons.
Another great approach to posting about products
is to consider what your vendors or manufacturers
are doing online.
Emily Stine, of Stine Media, who handles all
social media efforts for Stine Home + Yard’s
12 locations in Louisiana, says she works with the
stores’ vendors to use their images and graphics on
the company’s social media. She also recommends
sharing posts and photos that vendors have posted to
their own pages, while adding a local twist such as,
“Find this drill at your local Stine Home + Yard.”
Authenticity
Stine gives social media a personal touch by
posting images with people, whether they are sales
associates, members of the Stine family or customers
shopping in the store or winning prizes from store
contests and sweepstakes.
Cabirac says sharing fun pictures or videos
is a great way to engage. For example, the Kief
Hardware staff produced a video in-store titled
“Grease” that involved a story line of the staff going
back in time, acting, lip-syncing and dancing to
songs from the famous movie, “Grease.” The video
entertained customers and showed personality.
Cabirac believes that it is crucial to put
genuine effort into social media in order to grow
your audience.
“No matter if we have 100 people following us
or 5,000, we always put the same effort into social
media, because that’s how we got to the engagement
level we’re at today,” Cabirac says.
Engagement
One huge benefit of social media is that it gives
you an opportunity to interact with your customers
in real time. And, engaging your followers is also
important for building and sustaining your brand.
If someone tweets at you or comments on your
Facebook post, reply back and stay present.
“If you join the conversation, you need to stay
in the conversation,” Ervin says. “Don’t put social
media there and expect it to explode without
checking it. It’s a relationship platform.”
For Stine, the ideal time frame to respond to
customer comments is within one hour.
“The reason we like to respond within the
hour is because once [the customer] sees you’ve
responded quickly, whatever complaint they had
tends to go away, because they see how responsive
you are as a company, and they’re pleased with
that,” Stine says.
Stine uses a predetermined, customizable
template to respond to negative comments, keeping
responses prompt and consistent.
Cabirac, along with 80 percent of respondents
to NRHA’s 2016 Social Media Study, responds to
all comments. He avoids deleting any comments
and responds within the comment thread on social
media to display Kief Hardware’s character.
• Review the content you are posting,
or would like to begin posting, and
determine if it includes a good mix of
authentic, engaging content.
• Brainstorm interesting ways to show
your store’s brand and personality.
Ask yourself, “What’s unique about
my store?” Try to translate that to your
customers through social media.
• Develop guidelines for responding to
comments on social media, whether
it be responding within 24 hours or
creating a policy for how to deal with
negative comments.
Next Steps
Are You Posting Strong Content?

4. Hardware Retailing | March 201646
I
f you are frequently updating your social
media pages, it is likely that new followers
are occasionally trickling in. However, if you
want to see exponential growth, there are ways
to proactively drive traffic to your store’s social
media accounts.
Contests, Giveaways and Sweepstakes
One way to get people engaged and to grow
your following organically is to hold a contest,
giveaway or sweepstakes using social media.
Along with displaying in-store signage
with Sawyer’s True Value’s different social
media platforms, Sawyer tries to use different
promotions to create awareness around the
store’s accounts.
For example, last year the store held a
Halloween-themed pet contest, where customers
dressed their animals in costumes and posted
photos to social media. The store promoted the
contest on Facebook, but people could only
vote for their favorite participant on Instagram.
This converted traffic from Sawyer’s True
Value’s Facebook page to followers on its
Instagram account.
Using cross-platform growth is a great way to
inform customers of the different ways they can
engage with your brand.
During the 2014 holiday season, Cabirac
organized a giveaway that awarded $10,000 in
gift cards to one grand prize winner. Customers
had about five weeks to enter an unlimited
number of times and could do so by liking,
sharing or checking-in at Kief Hardware. To earn
the entry, customers had to show a cashier that
they’d engaged with the store on social media.
Customers could also earn entries through the
company’s text program and by making in-store
purchases, but the store’s Facebook following
skyrocketed as a result of the sweepstakes.
“We got around 500 new page likes, which
may not seem like a lot, but in no other form
of advertising can I say that I reached 500 new
people who now know what my store is and
what we’re about,” Cabirac says.
The key to growing your following is to
encourage people to share your content, especially
on Facebook, as shares are incredibly valuable.
“’Likes’ mean, ‘I like what you said,’ but
‘shares’ means, ‘I like it so well that I gave it
to my friend, who then gave it to two of her
friends, who gave it to four of her friends…that’s
how you go viral,” Ervin says.
Paid Advertising
In addition to sweepstakes and giveaways,
another way to reach new audiences and drive
traffic to your page is through paid advertising.
Utilizing paid advertising options through
Facebook allows you to target ads to Facebook
and Instagram users based on specific criteria,
including demographic information, but also
very specific areas of interest. With a wide
variety of advertising options available through
the platform, you can spend as much, or as little,
as you want on these ads.
Stine Home + Yard contributes 20 percent of
its advertising budget to Facebook advertising.
The company takes advantage of different ad
options to encourage potential and existing
followers to “Like” the company’s Facebook
page, advertise specific products, drive traffic
to the website, distribute coupons and promote
events, videos and sweepstakes.
Each month, the company reaches
approximately 300,000 people within 10 miles
of a Stine Home + Yard location at an average
of six times in their Facebook News Feed with
Facebook advertising.
Recently, the company engaged in a detailed
Facebook ad campaign that involved a series
of targeted carousel ads for tools sold at Stine
Home + Yard. As a result of the Facebook ads,
tools sales were up 40 percent.
Stine says Facebook sweepstakes and
advertising has helped the company collect
Are You Actively Growing
Your Following?
“We got around 500 new
page likes, which may not
seem like a lot, but in no
other form of advertising
can I say that I reached
500 new people who now
know what my store is
and what we’re about.”
—James Cabirac, Kief Hardware

5. Hardware Retailing | March 201648
over 10,000 emails and gather approximately
100,000 Facebook page likes over the past four years,
while engaging their audience with fun content.
To reach the company’s target audience, Stine
uploads the company’s email list, then Facebook
matches the customers’ emails with their emails
on Facebook.
Another targeting feature available is
Lookalike Audience, which finds attributes of
the individuals identified in your email list, and
creates a very similar segment to target ads to.
Ads can also be targeted at people who currently
like your store’s page, friends of people who like
your page, individuals with specific interests
and more.
Sawyer also uses Facebook to run specific,
targeted ads about once per month. He uses
Facebook advertising to target dog food
information to pet owners or sports attire
to college students in his area. He also used
Facebook to promote an in-store event around
fire safety. He created a post targeted at women
ages 20-45 with children who lived within
25 miles of the store and were not currently
RSVP’d to the event on Facebook, along with a
few other criteria.
The examples provided by these retailers only
brush the surface of the advertising options
available through Facebook. The possibilities
are abundant. To learn more about Facebook
advertising, visit www.facebook.com/business.
• Determine how much time and money
you’re willing to put forth to grow your
audience, and create a plan accordingly.
• Identify giveaways or contests to host
on social media that your customers
would find fun and intriguing enough
to “share.”
• Familiarize yourself with different paid
advertising opportunities available on
social media platforms. While you may
want to commit to organic growth, it’s
important to understand what’s available
on this growing ad platform.
Next Steps

6. I
f you’re putting in the effort to create unique
posts, engage your customers, run contests
and maybe even post ads on social media, it is
essential to know if your efforts are effective.
Cabirac consistently checks his Facebook
analytics and uses an app called “Followers”
to track when people follow and unfollow
Kief Hardware’s Facebook page.
“It’s important to see what struck a chord with
people so you know what to post next time,”
says Cabirac. “You can see what people are
responding to each day. If I see a lot of people
drop, I pay attention to who’s dropping and why
they might be doing that.”
Stine also tracks posts frequently and tracks
everything from followers, post likes and shares
to overall engagement. She also measures the
company’s ads for clicks, engagement and the
total cost it takes to reach their audience.
“Metrics on Facebook are far superior to
anything you can get from any other channel,
whether it’s print, TV or whatever,” Stine says.
“You can truly measure anything.”
To track Lehman’s social media accounts,
Ervin uses Google Analytics and the analytic
tools provided by each platform to determine
information like referral websites and how long
people are viewing videos. One team member
evaluates each platform regularly and reports
to the larger group on a quarterly basis. They
review trends and determine what has worked
over the past month.
“It is important to regularly look at what your
customers do on social media and determine an
action plan,” Ervin says. “If we post a five-minute
video and the drop-off rate shows that everyone
stopped watching at one minute, our customers
are telling us the video is too long. We will use
that information in creating the next video.”
In order to help you analyze your efforts,
we’ve created an analytic tracking template you
can use each month to evaluate your company’s
social media engagement. This template includes
tracking formulas for several data points, and
allows you to easily compare engagement month
to month.
Are Your Efforts Working?
Hardware Retailing | March 201650

7. Hardware Retailing | March 201652
• Download Hardware Retailing’s
free, premade social media
tracking template at
TheRedT.com/SMKit.
• Create a tracking system to
regularly monitor your social
media performance.
• Evaluate your analytics on a
weekly, monthly and yearly
basis to determine what type
of content is working and if
your efforts are driving sales
or in-store traffic.
Next Steps
Ask the ExpertThis template is part of a
larger social media toolkit that is
available to download at
TheRedT.com/SMKit. Other
elements of the package include:
• Scheduling Template
This spreadsheet will help you
create a plan for posting social
media content to your accounts.
The template allows you to plan
out post details including date,
time, social platform and person
responsible for posting. It can
also help you ensure that your
social efforts are in sync with
store events and promotions.
• Social Media Best Practices
We’ve summarized best practices
from this story, and have added
on a few more tips in this list
of top 10 things to consider
while using social media.
This reference is perfect for
evaluating and improving your
current social media processes.
• Facebook Page Builder
There are several components
that make a great Facebook
page. This quick, visual guide
will help you determine if
your company’s page includes
all of the essentials to make
it a user-friendly and
informative resource.
Crystal Vilkaitis
Retail Social Media Expert and
Owner of Crystal Media
Vilkaitis and her company are
dedicated to helping retailers
integrate proven social media, mobile and email
marketing strategies into their businesses. Vilkaitis
started Social Edge, an online membership group
exclusive to retailers looking to gain an edge over
competition using social media. For more information
and free social media tips, visit crystalmedia.co or
socialedge.co, and visit TheRedT.com/SMExpert to
read the full interview with Vilkaitis.
What are some unique best practices for
increasing page traffic without putting money
into social media?
Many store owners completely forget to direct
people to their social media accounts! The first
step to social media success is making sure your
customers know you’re online. This can be achieved
with in-store signage, including social media
usernames or a specific hashtag that users can
follow to find home DIY tips or information about
your store. In addition, you can send an email inviting
people to join you on social media, and if you couple
this with a contest, conversions will be higher.
You can manually follow your target audience on
Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Use Facebook
as your business page, and network with other
local business pages your customers follow. Ask
people to do what you want them to do, such
as, “Like this post if you agree!” or “Like/double
tap if you’re in the middle of a DIY project.” Ask
people to tag themselves or someone who would
like a product, tips or blog post. Implementing
these strategies can increase reach and exposure
to your current network and their friends.
What are best practices for tracking and
understanding social media analytics?
I recommend having a tracking resource, which
can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet. Track
growth on each active social media platform from
month to month. Look at engagement such as
likes, clicks, retweets, mentions, etc. and add in
notes about comments and questions customers
leave on your page. Are people asking questions
about store hours, location or products? Those
types of questions are meaningful.
Download NRHA’s scheduling
and analytics tracking
templates to help improve
your social media processes.
March 2016 | Hardware Retailing 53